Kendrick Lamar put on a blistering Super Bowl halftime show, as he brought out surprise guests Samuel L Jackson and Serena Williams as well as his longtime collaborator SZA at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
The Grammy-winning hip-hop star headlined the 59th Super Bowl with a jaw-dropping medley of some of his biggest hits, including diss track “Not Like Us”, which takes aim at his Canadian rival, Drake.
Lamar, 37, self-censored the controversial lyric in which he branded the “One Dance” singer a “certified pedophile”, a line that prompted Drake to sue his (and Lamar’s) record label Universal Music Group last month. He alluded to the lawsuit while teasing the track’s intro throughout his set, quipping: “I want to perform their favorite song, but you know they love to sue.”
UMG denied Drake’s allegations of defamation, sharing a statement with The Independent that said: “Not only are these claims untrue, but the notion that we would seek to harm the reputation of any artist—let alone Drake—is illogical.”
The halftime show was preceded by pre-game performances from Lauren Daigle and Trombone Shorty, who dueted on “America the Beautiful”, and Jon Batiste, who sang the national anthem. Lamar followed in the footsteps of previous headliners including Rihanna, who topped the bill with a headline-making pregnancy reveal in 2023, and Usher, who performed at last year’s Super Bowl in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Lamar’s show was watched by a number of celebrity guests including Sir Paul McCartney, Bradley Cooper and Taylor Swift, who turned up to cheer on her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, as the team took a battering from the Philadelphia Eagles.
Dressed as “Uncle Sam”, Hollywood actor Jackson introduced Lamar while also regularly interrupting him, at one point yelling: “Too loud, too reckless, too ghetto. Mr Lamar, do you really know how to play the game?”
Meanwhile, tennis megastar Serena Williams made a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo where she was seen dancing under a streetlight, as rapper Mustard also turned up to support Lamar. Dancers dressed in red, white and blue flanked the rapper to form an American flag.
Also on Lamar’s setlist was a rendition of “Squabble Up” from his latest album GNX, which he performed while on top of the Buick model. From there, he dived into “Humble” from his 2017 album DAMN along with “DNA”, before his 2024 Drake diss track “Euphoria” and GNX’s “Man at the Garden”.
Joined by SZA, he performed “Luther” – also from GNX – and the lead single from his Black Panther soundtrack, “All the Stars”, before finally delivering his chart-topping 2024 hit “Not Like Us”, which received an approving roar from the crowd. The track won both Song of the Year and Record of the Year at the Grammys last week.
Drake was conveniently on the other side of the world as the performance got underway, as he continued his Anita Max Win tour in Melbourne, Australia. He has yet to address his rival’s victory at the Grammys – or indeed his Super Bowl performance – but assured fans he was “very much alive” at a recent show.
On social media, many fans seemed delighted by the 12-minute set, while others complained that Lamar had failed to perform anything from his earlier albums, such as his Grammy-winning 2015 record, To Pimp a Butterfly, or 2012’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City.
For Kansas City Chiefs fans, though, the halftime show spectacle was a temporary respite from the battering their team received from the Eagles, with Swift looking grim-faced as she was joined by celebrity friends such as rapper Ice Spice and the Haim sisters.
After the “Karma” singer was shown on the jumbotron, the crowd erupted in boos, which she appeared to respond to as she gave the camera a quick side-eye. However, Williams ended up defending the singer on social media as she told her to disregard the negative crowd energy: “I love you @taylorswift 13 don't listen to those boos!!!” she wrote in a post on X.
Swift’s longtime pals Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds were conspicuously absent amid their Justin Baldoni drama; the Gossip Girl star attended last year’s championship game with Swift and Ice Spice and has attended a number of other Chiefs games with the pop megastar.
However, she and her husband, Deadpool star Reynolds, appeared to skip this year’s final as a New York judge threatened to move up Lively and her former It Ends With Us co-star and director Baldoni’s March 2026 trial date, should their lawyers continue their war of words in the press.
Judge Lewis Liman said both sides have “given the public plenty to feast upon”.
Meanwhile, Swift’s boyfriend Kelce, 35, looked downcast as he sat on the sidelines during the third quarter as the score read Chiefs 6, Eagles 34. The game finished 22-40 for the Eagles.
Fans had been hoping that Swift might either join Lamar on stage (they collaborated on her 2014 remix of “Bad Blood”), or announce her latest re-recorded album. Yet Swift seemed determined to simply show her support for Kelce, with rare camera shots showing her focused on the pitch.
Reviewing for The Independent, critic Mark Beaumont wrote that Lamar’s set would “undoubtedly go down as one of the most important half-time shows in the history of the event, if not the most significant mass-televised rap performance of all time.
“The Drake baiting was a smokescreen; what really happened was a righteous nation showed up and bared its teeth,” he wrote. The great American game has only just begun.”
